Alicia punched hard and evaded, finding she’d run out of enemies after just a few minutes. Casting around, it seemed a little rude to just barge in on Hayden’s brawl, but with a loud cough and a little wave she caught the merc’s attention and brought him over to her side. Eight seconds later he was down.
“You’re welcome,” she told Hayden.
“I had that.”
“I know, but Hay, you haven’t been shot in a while. Thought I’d take that chance right off the table.”
The mercs fought doggedly, handing out bruises and bleeding mouths but failing to stop the SPEAR team for more than a few minutes. When they were groaning, lying practically motionless, their leader dead, Hayden signaled a final sprint for the safe house.
“We all good?”
Crouch and Yorgi came back from the shadows. The pair had never pretended to be fighters, but had taken weapons to use in case they were needed, a plan so well executed the mercs never even knew about the spare backup. Crouch took point now and led them through darker streets, and the team used Smyth and Kenzie to check for any signs of pursuit.
There were none. But there was something else. A brooding darkness lying over the less traveled streets of Cairo, a menace unseen but heavily present. Something that offered violence and fire and the chance of turmoil. Drake had felt it before many times—close to war zones and inside cities fighting for their lives. At border crossings that might be subject to attack. The Middle East was a roiling cauldron of ferocity, madness and religious hatred. Is anywhere safe?
Drake and Alicia checked the side alleys. Mai took a quick sprint across the rooftops.
“Clear.”
Together, they headed to safety.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FrameHub were both pleased and dubious. Their army of mercenaries had secured the first clue set right at the back of the first seal, but had come across a problem larger than they had anticipated. FrameHub weren’t entirely sure how to process the information, or how best to react.
They were IT gods, not military captains.
The man on the conference call was the leader of the mercs. He called himself Vladimir and spoke with a Russian accent.
“It is an American Special Forces unit called Team SPEAR. They’re off the books, specialists in everything you could name and many things you couldn’t. Taken down some of the world’s worst.”
“It sounds like you admire them,” Piranha said.
“They’re soldiers, and pretend to be nothing else. One time—we were all like that. At least, most of us were. They took out enough of my men to force me to recruit even more.” Vladimir sighed.
“The timetable must not be compromised,” Barracuda said in a robotic computer-generated voice.
“It won’t be. You employed me because I have good connections and get the job done when and how you specify, not for my shocking good looks and bowling arm.”
“Ahh, okay.” Barracuda’s uncertainty made the mechanical voice absurd.
“What do you know of this . . . SPEAR?” Piranha tried to cover for him.
“Too much to retell,” Vladimir said. “There’s about ten of them, I guess. Mix of nationalities. Here’s the interesting thing—the American government recently disavowed them. These guys’re acting on their own.”
Piranha was confused and didn’t try to hide it this time. “What are you saying?”
“It is too early to know but I do believe they’re acting on their own. That puts them in our territory and easier to kill. No backup, limited tech. All this helps. Also, if the American’s have disavowed SPEAR they will have someone hunting them down, but I haven’t found any details yet. Perhaps you guys could help?”
Piranha weighed and judged the request instantly. “We can find that information, but how will it help?”
“It will tell me the worst of what we’re up against.”
“Okay, I understand. I’ll have the information within the hour.”
“Within the . . .” Vladimir sounded shocked and doubtful. “Something like that will be deeply classified. It’s hidden behind so many—”
“Please,” Piranha murmured. “I said an hour because we have a retro office Galaga challenge planned. That will take forty-five minutes.”
Vladimir remained silent.
“Did you find out why this team were disavowed?” Manta asked. “That could help.”
“Couldn’t say. Usually though, these things have little to do with a team’s actions and much to do with political maneuvering. I doubt the real reason will be on file.”
“It’s fine,” Piranha said. “Please concentrate on the tombs and the seven seals. This knowledge is vital to our future and thus to yours. We can make you rich, Mr. Vladimir. Just work with us to find that seventh seal. That is your sole and only goal right now.”
“Understood. The seals are crucial. They’re also front and center on many men’s radars right now. What are you boys gonna do about that?”
Piranha smiled at the screen. “Something huge. You will hear about it, be assured.”
Manta snorted. “A Tibetan monk will hear of it.”
Moray glanced at him. “They have Wi-Fi in Tibet, idiot.”
“Yeah, I know that. It was a figure of speech, asshat.”
“Right,” Vladimir cut in. “I’ll let you boys get on with it. Keep me updated.”
“We’re not boys,” Piranha said. “Well, not all of us. Rest assured we have a method to distract the entire world from the seven seals of Egypt.”
“You said that already. I’ll be watching and listening.”
“Good,” Piranha said, unable to come up with anything witty. They needed Vladimir though—somebody out there in the real world dealing with real-world problems and situations. None of them had seen sunlight for months. They were too busy following their mandate: Knowledge is power. Down here they could accumulate vast amounts on everyone and anything, but if the curse of the seven seals was right and led to an incredible doomsday weapon . . .
FrameHub thought that was ultra-cool.
Vladimir signed off. Piranha shook his head at the entire group and called for FrameHub to reorder. It was bordering on an extremely momentous time.
“Tell me, FrameHub, are we ready?”
“We are ready,” the collective agreed.
“Shall we make them fear us?”
“We shall.”
“Shall we make them cower?”
“We will.”
“Press that start button then,” Piranha said. “It’s game on.”
Piranha arranged his thoughts. With the first seal broken and the clue discovered, the mercs would handle the second seal. Some kind of abandoned tomb according to Vladimir. FrameHub had been formulating a plan for some time now, a game plan, to bring three nations to their knees, and then two of them to collapse. It was a test and a warning, something to make the rest of the world sit up and beg.
Literally.
They were connected worldwide through the computer network. And not just to the Internet but every single thing on earth that required any kind of mainframe or processor. The best hackers of their time had become a divine and superhuman collective, and the world was about to find out what they could do.
Piranha watched proceedings. In their real-life war game three countries would be threatened, all by email message. The first to capitulate to their demands would win, the other two would be destroyed. It was pure gaming rules.
“We expect them to ignore the first demand,” Piranha said. “So prepare the second. We need to be taken seriously.”
A desire he’d felt his whole life.
FrameHub had researched carefully and identified the right agency, the right branch of that agency and even the correct person to send the threat to. It would be registered, so that when the second was received the level would be escalated. There was a procedure to go through and because FrameHub needed the time and the lengthy distraction they would happily adhere to and not force it.
Their rules. Their game.
Piranha ran it through his head. “The governments of Egypt, Turkey and Greece have twenty four hours to meet our demands, those being the delivery of three hundred million dollars to an account of our choosing. Failure to meet these demands will result in a catastrophic failure of your entire infrastructure, sending you back to the Dark Ages. You will face famine, disease, war and utter bankruptcy. Only one country will be allowed to meet these demands—the very first to do so. The other two will crumble. Do we—FrameHub—have your attention? Good, you have our demands. Take them seriously or perish.”
It would be analyzed, traced, taken apart. It would be subject to a deep data dive, an Interpol investigation—all kinds of scrutiny. It would do them no good. FrameHub had inserted several clever reroutes into the transmission that would force the authorities’ tech guys to attest to their genius and sincerity.
The rest would no doubt rely on the second demand, where a demonstration would be in order. Good. Really, I can’t wait. Piranha had never set off a real live missile. The difference between game theory and real life would be interesting to see.
“Message sent,” Orca said.
Piranha grinned at the collective, unable to hide his glee. “Just twenty four hours,” he said excitedly. “And we get to do this shit for real!”
A cheer echoed around the underground bunker.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hayden Jaye finished her call and threw the cell on the table. The room was cramped. To the left Kinimaka twitched at the gap in the curtains, checking out the street below. Every three minutes he gave a shake of his head, signaling all was quiet. Drake and the rest of the team sat or stood around the small area, drinking water and coffee, checking and cleaning weapons which they would now keep with them at all times.
“That was Claudia from the DC office. Old friend. She says Lauren arrived safely.”
The team immediately took note, sitting up and focusing.
“What else did she say?” Smyth asked, his voice thick with anxiety.
“Not much. Lauren’s being questioned right now. The buzz is that she’s in the clear, but they’re taking no chances.”
“As we thought,” Kinimaka rumbled. “Everyone involved covering their ass.”
“Yeah. Lauren played it just right though. Another few days and she can get started.”
Smyth coughed. “Maybe.”
Hayden tried a commiserating look, realized it wasn’t working and gave up. Lauren had indeed done the right thing in her opinion, but everything she did from here on in—at least for a while—would be under scrutiny. She was intelligent, street-smart, and hopefully working with a crew like theirs for the last few years would have a positive effect on her.
Lauren would come through.
Hayden stretched her weary muscles, opened a bottle of water, and took a long gulp. The room was stifling. Sweat ran freely down her face. Outside, the streets were noisy and packed, just another day for the locals. She wondered what had happened to the mercs.
“Let’s get this done,” she said. “Then we can get the hell out of this oven. First, this ransom demand from a new group calling themselves FrameHub. Opinions are divided. Some say it’s a childish prank, others that the countries involved should be placed on the highest alerts.”
Drake looked interested but Hayden held up a hand. “That’s the kind of job Team SPEAR would have been given,” she said. “We’re not Team SPEAR anymore. At least not in the eyes of the government.”
An air of despondency settled across the room. Dahl wiped sweat from his brow. “We may still want to monitor it.”
Crouch drained a bottle of water. “I can do that,” he said. “My people at Interpol and other European agencies will be watching closely.”
Hayden accepted with a nod. “All right. If you can . . . gather something together. One of the countries involved is Egypt so it could affect us all.”
Crouch nodded. “Speaking of Egypt, what do we do next?”
“Hey, you’re the boss,” Alicia said. “You tell us.”
“I thought Hayden was the boss,” Kinimaka spoke up.
“Shit,” Drake looked around innocently. “I thought I was.”
Hayden laughed. “Nobody’s the boss here, guys. It’s just a family now.”
“We have to be the oddest family in all of history.” Mai looked around. “From the mad, the bad and the incredibly ugly to the pretty, the witty and the ultra-dumb. What a motley crew.”
“Umm,” Alicia frowned. “Which is which?”
Mai laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you can work it out.”
Kenzie put an arm around Dahl. “The mad and the bad are sitting right here.”
Dahl shrugged it off. “Back to business. What do we know about the second tomb, Michael?”
Crouch took a breath. “As I said before, finding the second tomb and locating or not locating the second symbol will confirm if the so-called curse is real. If there’s a second clue then we have to work on the theory that we’re really searching for the actual capstone and that the ancient doomsday machine exists.”
“More tombs? More buried treasure?” Alicia looked gloomy. “More running from the authorities? I’m sick of going underground.”
“Nice. The clue I found back at Amenhotep’s tomb was a depiction of the capstone along with a drawing of a tomb. I recognize the sculptures depicted, with the three pillars outside, but haven’t been able to place it in my memory. But that’s not a problem—we can look it up. The problem is this . . . we’re not the only ones chasing this.”
“Not by a long shot,” Mai said.
Hayden listened for a moment, taking in the mood of the team. In so many ways this was different for them—a guard at the window, a back-street hotel, and a cramped little room, limited tech support, having to look out for authorities rather than encourage them, always worried they may be spotted—but they were now relying on each other more than ever before and the actual mission parameters were the same. Of course, due to intense situations such as theirs, personal issues were sidelined.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
Time away from private relationships helped put them into perspective, it seemed. Her position as leader removed her from deeper feelings. Now that they were all on a par, she saw how badly she’d upset Mano. Whatever words she’d said had been purely manufactured to give her space—but the friendly Hawaiian didn’t know that. She watched him now as he watched the street, wondering if there was any way back.
Crouch continued: “We have to be fast and faultless. If others found that capstone symbol they could be heading to the second tomb as we speak.”
“We have to assume they did,” Kenzie said.
“Definitely. So let’s break out that laptop.”
Mai took it from a backpack and handed it over to Alicia.
The Englishwoman regarded it with horror. “What the hell are you doing? Don’t bring that thing near me.”
“You can’t type, Taz?”
“I don’t do geek. Yogi, my boy? C’mere. Wrap your mitts around this.”
The Russian looked confused but grabbed the laptop anyway. Following Crouch’s descriptions, he began to trawl a path through images.
“All this talk about curses,” Alicia said. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I remember Tutankhamun’s tomb was said to be cursed.”
“Well, a curse is pretty much all-encompassing over here. Any person that disturbs an Egyptian body, be it a mummy or a pharaoh, can be affected. There are no differentiations. Thieves, kids, archaeologists, holidaymakers. You name it. You’re all fair game. Some Egyptian tombs contain curses, some don’t. Most commonly, the mistaken one is Tutankhamun’s. His resting place contained no curse.”
Dahl grunted. “A curse can be distorted into anything you want,” he said. “They’re usually rather vague.”
“And it normally mentions disease,” Crouch said. “Which, when one disturbs a corpse, is not out
of the question.”
“No seven plagues then?” Alicia threw a glance at the window as if expecting hordes of flies and locusts gathering there.
“No, and that was different, as you know. That was God’s wrath. But the whole ‘curse’ commotion was thrown back into the light when Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun. Carter’s canary died in the mouth of a cobra, thus inciting the locals to fear the onset of a curse. Later, Lord Carnarvon died, after becoming infected by a mosquito bite. A letter was written two weeks prior to his death, and published in the New York World magazine, in which Marie Corelli asserted that ‘dire punishment’ would fall upon anyone that desecrated a tomb. Mussolini, who some time before had accepted a mummy as a gift, ordered it removed. Next, and incredibly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became entangled in it, suggesting that ‘elementals’ created by ancient priests were involved and had caused Carnarvon’s death.”
Alicia shivered in the heat. “You can stop there if you like.”
But Crouch was on a roll, in his own element and talking about the very thing he loved most in the world. “Soon after, a man called Sir Bruce Ingram, who had been gifted by Carter a mummified hand with a bracelet that bore the inscription ‘cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come water, fire and pestilence’, saw his house burned down and then, after it was rebuilt, suffered a flood.”
“Shit, you couldn’t make this up.” Kenzie laughed.
“Surely you have come across curses in your line of work?” Crouch asked her.
“My line . . . ? Well, I guess as a relic smuggler you’d think so,” Kenzie was taken a little aback by the direct question. “But believe me, the only curses I come across are those I speak and those uttered by my men when I make them work.”
Alicia looked over. “Yeah, Drake’s like that.”
“Hey!”
“Howard Carter himself was hugely skeptical of the curse,” Crouch went on. “But he did write about an unsettling occurrence—when in the desert he saw jackals of the same type as Anubis for the first time in almost forty years.”
Alicia gulped. “And you want us to go out there?”
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